Sanctuary of Mariazell

Mariazell, the town born of a sanctuary

Mariazell is not a great city in which a church happened to be built: it is a town born of a sanctuary. The small Styrian city, in the north of the Land, owes its very existence and name to the pilgrimage. It lies about 143 kilometres north of Graz, in the Salza valley, among the northern foothills of the Alps, at 868 metres altitude.^[7] Everything in the town converges towards the sanctuary square and the bright mass of the basilica.

A mountain basin

The sanctuary occupies the floor of a mountain basin ringed by wooded heights — the Bürgeralpe towers immediately above the town. This secluded position, in a fold of the Limestone Alps, shaped the identity of the place: Mariazell is not on a great thoroughfare; people climb up to it on purpose, at the end of a road or a pilgrimage path. The town remains, to this day, a destination reached only after crossing the mountains.

The monk of St Lambrecht

Around the middle of the 12th century, the territory of the future Mariazell belonged to the Benedictine abbey of St Lambrecht (Stift St. Lambrecht), to which these highlands had been given — tradition traces this donation back to Duke Henry III of Carinthia, around 1103.^[8][9] To serve the sparse inhabitants of these valleys, the abbey sent one of its monks, named Magnus, as priest-chaplain.^[10][11]

According to the traditional account, on 21 December 1157, the monk Magnus made his way into the Zellertal carrying with him a statue of the Virgin carved from limewood.^[12][13] He was no founder of a great sanctuary: a simple missionary religious, charged with souls in a poor and remote country.

The split rock and the first cell

The legend relates that a rock suddenly barred the monk's path. Magnus set down upon the stone the statue of the Virgin he was carrying — and the rock is said to have split open to let him through.^[14][15] On that very spot, he built a wooden cell to shelter the image and celebrate Mass there. This hut is the primitive nucleus of the sanctuary: the Chapel of Grace stands today on the site of the first "cell".^[16][17]

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 6:10 — the prayer which generations of pilgrims have come to repeat before the statue of Mariazell^[18]

The name: "Maria in der Zelle"

The name of the place comes from this cell. Mariazell is the contraction of "Maria in der Zelle" — Mary in the cell.^[19][20] The place name alone tells the whole story: not a cathedral conceived by a prince, but a small monk's dwelling around an image of the Virgin, which gradually became, through the influx of pilgrims, the spiritual centre of a country. The sanctuary is attested as a place of pilgrimage from the 13th century.^[21][22]

The material history of Mariazell is punctuated by two great princely figures whose gratitude transformed the cell into a monumental sanctuary: a margrave of Moravia at the turn of the 13th century, then a king of Hungary in the 14th. Each, after a grace received, had something built at Mariazell.

Margrave Henry of Moravia (c. 1200)

The first great stage is attached to Margrave Henry of Moravia (Heinrich von Mähren). Tradition relates that he was healed of a grave illness — the gout, which paralysed him — after praying before the statue of Mariazell.^[23][24] In thanksgiving, he had erected, around 1200, the first stone church in place of the wooden cell — a Romanesque building which replaced the primitive hut.^[25][26] The sanctuary thus passed from wood to stone.

Louis I of Hungary and the Gothic church

The second great stage came from Hungary. King Louis I of Hungary (Ludwig der Große, Louis the Great), in the 14th century, attributed to the intercession of the Virgin of Mariazell a military victory won over superior forces.^[27][28] Out of gratitude, he endowed the sanctuary with a vast Gothic church: the choir was begun from 1340, and the three-aisled nave from 1360, crowned with a mighty stone bell tower.^[29][30]

From this Hungarian generosity was born one of Mariazell's great titles: Magna Domina Hungarorum, Great Lady of the Hungarians. The Styrian sanctuary became, for centuries, a centre of Hungarian devotion as much as Austrian.^[31]

The treasury image (Schatzkammerbild)

Louis of Hungary did not offer stones alone: he gave a precious image, the Schatzkammerbild ("treasury image"), a richly adorned Marian image which tradition associates with his victory.^[32][33] This image, distinct from the statue of grace, is one of the masterpieces of the sanctuary's treasury (Schatzkammer); its motif is carved on the tympanum of the portal.^[34] Mariazell thus possesses two venerated images: the Romanesque statue of the Chapel of Grace, heart of the pilgrimage, and the treasury icon given by the King of Hungary.

The present basilica is not of a single cast: it is the superposition of three epochs — a Romanesque nucleus, a great Gothic church, a Baroque shell — welded into a single monument. It is this telescoping of styles which gives Mariazell its unique silhouette.

The Gothic bell tower (14th century)

Of Louis of Hungary's great Gothic building campaign there remains above all the central bell tower, a tall richly ornamented stone tower rising to about 90 metres.^[35][36] This Gothic bell tower remained the mast of the whole edifice: when the Baroque age came, it was not destroyed — it was kept at the centre, and it still gives the sanctuary today its soaring verticality, between the two later towers.

Fires and trials

Like so many great sanctuaries, Mariazell knew fire. The medieval church was damaged by fires on several occasions, notably in 1420 and 1474.^[37] These partial destructions, together with the ever-growing influx of pilgrims, made necessary, in the 17th century, a complete remodelling of the building.

The great Baroque rebuilding (1644–1683)

The decisive transformation took place between 1644 and 1683, under the direction of the Italian architect Domenico Sciassia.^[38][39] Sciassia did not raze the Gothic church: he enveloped and enlarged it in the Baroque taste. The nave was lengthened and widened into a vast three-aisled hall church, covered with a barrel vault and crowned, towards the choir, with an oval dome.^[40][41] On either side were added twelve side chapels — six on each side — topped with galleries.^[42]

"How terrible is this place! This is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven." — Genesis, 28:17 — Jacob's words at Bethel, traditionally read for the dedication of sanctuaries^[43]

The three towers

The three-towered physiognomy dates from this period. Sciassia flanked the central Gothic bell tower with two domed Baroque towers, lower and rounded.^[44][45] This composition — a sharp medieval spire framed by two Baroque onion domes — became the emblem of Mariazell, reproduced on medals, pilgrimage pictures and even on the sanctuary's gingerbread. It tells at a single glance the two ages of the building.

Plan and dimensions

The table above sums up the structure of the building as visited today: a sanctuary in which one circulates around a heart — the Chapel of Grace — placed not at the far end, but in the middle of the nave.

It has rightly been said that Mariazell possesses two centres: a sacred centre, the Chapel of Grace with the statue, and an artistic centre, Fischer von Erlach's high altar.^[46] To understand the place is to understand this dialogue between the little Madonna and the great architecture surrounding her.

The Chapel of Grace (Gnadenkapelle)

The Chapel of Grace (Gnadenkapelle) stands, unusually, at the centre of the nave, on the exact site of the monk Magnus's first cell.^[47][48] Its present trapezoidal plan dates to 1690, but it incorporates 14th-century elements.^[49] It is there, beneath a canopy of silver and gold, that the venerated statue rests: the pilgrim does not walk towards a distant altar, he circles the inner sanctuary as around a hearth.

The silver altar (1726–1727)

The altar of grace housing the statue is a remarkable piece of goldsmith's work. Its reredos was commissioned in 1726 by Abbot Kilian Werlein of St Lambrecht; the design was supplied by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach — son of the great architect —, and the silverwork executed by Philipp Jakob Drentwett, at Augsburg.^[50] In 1734, the sculptor Lorenzo Mattielli added the statues of Saint Benedict and Saint Lambert — the patrons of the guardian abbey — together with those of Saint Joseph, Joachim and Anne.^[51]

Maria Theresa's silver grille (1756)

For the 600th anniversary of the sanctuary, in 1756, Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa offered the precious silver grille enclosing the Chapel of Grace, the work of the Viennese goldsmiths Josef Würth and Joseph Moser.^[52] The grille bears, on one side, the imperial arms surmounted by the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and, on the other, the Hungarian arms of Maria Theresa with the crown of Saint Stephen — a heraldic summary of all that Mariazell represented for the House of Habsburg and for Hungary.^[53]

Fischer von Erlach's high altar (1704)

At the eastern end, beneath the dome, rises the high altar, a masterpiece of Austrian Baroque. Commissioned as early as 1692 by Abbot Franz von Kaltenhausen, it was designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach — the greatest architect of Baroque Austria — and dedicated to the Holy Trinity in 1704.^[54][55] Above the altar table, the tabernacle takes the form of a silver celestial globe, gripped by a serpent — symbol of vanquished sin — and surmounted by the Cross.^[56] The work thus sets, facing the primitive Madonna of the Chapel of Grace, the triumphant affirmation of salvation.

"O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see." — Lamentations, 1:12 — the verse which the liturgy applies to the contemplation of the Cross raised at the heart of the sanctuary^[57]

A Romanesque limewood Madonna

At the centre of everything — of the chapel, of the basilica, of the pilgrimage — there is a small statue. The statue of grace of Mariazell is a Romanesque Madonna, about 48 centimetres tall, carved from limewood.^[58][59] It represents the Mother of God carrying the Child. It is this modest image — and not a great reredos — which millions of pilgrims come to venerate; it is she whom devotion calls the Magna Mater Austriae, the Great Mother of Austria.^[60][61]

The contrast is striking: around this wooden statuette, centuries have heaped up silver, gold and marble. But the pilgrim knows that the heart of the place is not in the splendour — it lies in this humble image, inherited from the monk's cell.

The robes of the Virgin (Liebfrauenkleid)

According to an ancient custom, the statue is almost never shown bare: it is clothed in a precious robe (Liebfrauenkleid or Gnadengewand) leaving visible only the faces and hands of the Virgin and the Child.^[62] The sanctuary keeps more than a hundred and fifty of them, embroidered and offered over the centuries, and the robe is changed according to the liturgical season.^[63] These garments, far from being a decorative whim, continue a very ancient usage of adorning holy images: the Mother of God is clothed as a queen is honoured.

Marian devotion itself — its dogmatic foundation, its place in the Catholic faith — lies beyond the scope of this article, which is devoted to the place; it will be found in the Ignispedia dossiers dealing with the Virgin and her veneration.

The mother abbey

Mariazell was never an ordinary parish: from the beginning, the sanctuary has depended on the Benedictine abbey of St Lambrecht (Stift St. Lambrecht), in Styria, from which the monk Magnus had come.^[64][65] It is the sons of Saint Benedict who, from generation to generation, have served the pilgrimage, welcomed the crowds, maintained and embellished the building — it was an abbot of St Lambrecht who commissioned the silver altar, another the high altar.^[66][67]

The Superiorate

The administration of the sanctuary is entrusted to a Benedictine Superiorate: a community of monks of St Lambrecht resides at Mariazell to assure the liturgy, the confession of pilgrims and the guardianship of the holy place.^[68] The continuous presence of a monastic community — and not a mere passing clergy — is part of the sanctuary's identity: Mariazell remains, in the literal sense, a Benedictine "cell", true to its name.

Mother of three peoples

No sanctuary expresses better than Mariazell the Central European vocation of Catholicism. Its very titles bear witness: Magna Mater Austriae for the Austrians, Magna Domina Hungarorum for the Hungarians, Mater Gentium Slavorum — Mother of the Slavic peoples — for the Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes and Croats.^[69][70] For centuries, these peoples, today divided among several states, met together at the foot of the same Madonna, as in a common home.

The Via Sacra and the paths of Mariazell

People come to Mariazell on foot, by ancient pilgrimage paths. The most famous is the Via Sacra, the "sacred way" which historically links Vienna to the sanctuary through the mountains, lined with chapels and stations.^[71] Today, a network of pilgrimage trails — the Mariazeller Wege — converges on the town from the whole country and beyond: there are seven waymarked routes, totalling about 1,100 kilometres, opened to the public in 1981, starting from Vienna, Lower Austria, Styria, Burgenland, Upper Austria, Carinthia and Salzburg.^[72]

The Habsburgs and imperial devotion

Mariazell was, for centuries, the dynastic sanctuary of the House of Habsburg. Emperors came there as pilgrims — Leopold I went there in 1679 —, made sumptuous gifts there (the silver altar and grille bear witness) and attached to it the destiny of their family and their empire.^[73][74] To venerate the Virgin of Mariazell was, for the Habsburgs, to acknowledge Mary as patroness of the monarchy and of all the peoples it united.

The miracle books (Mirakelbücher)

The sanctuary long kept miracle books (Mirakelbücher) in which were recorded the graces and healings attributed to the Virgin of Mariazell: healings of the sick, deliverances, dangers escaped.^[75] These registers, from the cure of Margrave Henry of Moravia down to the countless ex-votos hung in the chapels, form the living memory of the place: not an abstract devotion, but a long series of concrete graces which generations wished to inscribe in stone and on paper.

Minor basilica (1907) and coronation (1908)

After seven and a half centuries of pilgrimage, the sanctuary received the highest liturgical honours. In 1907, Pope Saint Pius X raised the church of Mariazell to the rank of minor basilica by a motu proprio.^[76] The following year, in 1908, the venerated image was solemnly crowned, according to the rite of pontifical coronation of Marian images — the consecration of eight centuries of devotion.^[77]

John Paul II (1983) and Benedict XVI (2007)

In the 20th and 21st centuries, two popes came in person to Mariazell. Saint John Paul II went there in 1983, during his journey to Austria.^[78] Above all, on 8 September 2007 — on the feast of the Nativity of Mary — Pope Benedict XVI came to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the foundation (1157–2007) and offered the sanctuary the Golden Rose, a rare pontifical distinction.^[79][80] This jubilee set Mariazell back at the centre of the life of the Church in Central Europe, as in the days of the emperors.

Mariazell is not a great sanctuary built out of pride: it is a monk's cell become a basilica. Everything in the place keeps the trace of this humble origin — the name, the chapel planted in the middle of the nave, the little limewood Madonna beneath the silver and gold. Around her, eight centuries have laid down a healed margrave, a grateful King of Hungary, emperors at prayer, architects of genius, millions of pilgrims from all the peoples of Central Europe. But the centre has remained the same: a wooden statue, in a cell, to which people come to entrust their sorrow.

"Behold thy mother." — Gospel according to Saint John, 19:27 — the word of Christ on the cross, which the pilgrims of Mariazell hear as addressed to them^[81]

It is this movement which makes the Styrian sanctuary, more than a monument, a home: the place where Austria, Hungary and the Slavic peoples learned to call themselves, together, children of one same Mother.

• The sanctuary of Częstochowa — Jasna Góra and the Black Madonna, another great Marian heart of Central Europe.
• The sanctuary of Loreto — another basilica built to shelter a venerated holy place.
• The sanctuary of Manoppello, the sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo and the sanctuary of Mount Carmel — other sanctuaries of the same series.